New help at home

I have officially started my part-time work back in my company since mid-March and before doing so, I went on a mini shopping spree to support the chores to be done at home.

1) Philips Air Fryer
I should have gotten this earlier. Basically it helps to cook food without/with minimal oil and best part of this appliance is - the kitchen doesn't get oily at all (so eliminates the need to mop the kitchen floor everyday!)

 

2) OHM wireless vacuum
After recommendation from my SIL, I decided to give this a try. This replaces the magic clean wiper mop that I used everyday and now the house feels cleaner given that I only need to spend about 15mins to cover the whole house. The good thing about this vacuum is that it's super light weight (compared to the brands I see in Courts/Denki) and requires only a few hours of recharge every 3-4 days. And I get to see the amount of dust and hair in the transparent container (so effectively you know that the house is cleaned). Ever since I started using this, I have cut down the frequency of mopping from everyday to Tues, Thurs and Sat.

Travelling between workplace and back home every single weekday can be very tiring, especially on days that I carry my laptop back home to tidy up some of my work. Frankly, it is not easy to carry out a job which you work on half day everyday. I think it's easier to do 2 full days plus 1 half day ideally to fully maximise the time (in terms of arrangement of meetings) and travelling requirements. So after this 1 month, I have picked up the momentum, and well aware of the drop-dead time I need to leave office in order to reach the school on time to pick up the boys.

To me, every afternoon is like a battle against time. From 2-3pm, I will get the boys to shower, eat lunch, pack school bag and take break by allowing TV time. During this period, I will prepare the soup for dinner, eat my lunch, do a preliminary wash of the children's school uniforms, keep clothes, vacuum the place (where possible). From 3pm onwards, the kids will need my attention in their work, going through the errors with them, practising piano.. plus time in the playground. In between, I will try to steal pockets of time doing my office work. By 6pm, the boys get their free time while I spend the time in the kitchen getting dinner done. So usually, by Friday, my energy level will drop to almost zero and there won't be any home-cooked food for everyone :)

By now, I have a standard list of dishes that I prepare every week, and this makes weekend marketing tremendously easy (and quick). Honestly I don't cook vegetables well before I turned to a full time homemaker. After this period, I have ventured beyond my safe-haven broccoli to do these:

Nai Bai

snow peas with soy beans

Hei Bi Hiam long beans

plus garlic Xiao Bai Cai. I am glad that the boys have started to eat more vegetables (in fact all these vegetables) coupled with my pre-mix multigrain (brown/red/white) rice.
 
And I did these with the help of air-fryer:

honey wings

Fried Wantons

The boys missed these maki for their weekday lunch as I could barely rushed back on time to pick them up from the school in the afternoon. Probably I can make sushi lunch for them again during holidays or on weekends if I am not too worn out.

 

I believe my presence at home has certainly benefitted the boys.. so it's actually for me to balance my passion for work + time at home, in order to keep this arrangement sustainable.